This 2018 file photo shows the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant. The CPUC was forced to change a plan to have ratepayers cover 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of closing the plant after evidence emerged that the plan bad been secretly crafted.

This 2018 file photo shows the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant. The CPUC was forced to change a plan to have ratepayers cover 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of closing the plant after evidence emerged that the plan bad been secretly crafted. (U-T)

In a May interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom knocked the California Public Utilities Commission over its lack of transparency and accountability. He said if elected governor, his appointments would “reflect” his awareness of critiques against the body.

Here’s hoping Newsom had a similar conversation with Genevieve Shiroma, the former Sacramento Municipal Utility District and California Air Resources Board official he nominated this week to the CPUC board. Her background shows that she should bring a different view to regulating California’s three investor-owned utilities than those with ties to them, and it’s crucial to California that she have a different mind-set than the four appointees of now-departed Gov. Jerry Brown. Current members have long accepted the CPUC’s tightness with the investor-owned utilities it regulates, especially irresponsible, felonious and now bankruptcy-bound Pacific Gas & Electric. While the most egregious problems occurred under former President Michael Peevey, current President Michael Picker hasn’t done enough to shed the CPUC’s clubby image. In an August interview with the U-T Editorial Board, Picker defended the outrageous conduct of the private attorneys his agency had hired to “cooperate” with a criminal probe of the CPUC — even though they were blasted by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge for their bad faith in impeding the investigation by repeatedly fighting search warrants.

Shiroma should stress in her state Senate confirmation hearing that she will be an agent of change.